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Fig. 21.1
A screenshot from
Village Voices
where the player of the Blacksmith role is given the
quest to gather three metals
related to maintenance of their characters' livelihoods, and to complete quests
related to their responsibilities within the village. For example, the alchemist must
tend to his crop of magic mushrooms, keep an eye on his own health, and maybe
in the process of collecting and processing items, to build a wall to keep wolves
out of the village. At the same time, all of the characters are interdependent, thus
situations inevitably arise that trigger conflicts or exacerbate existing ones. For
example, in order to complete the barrier wall, the alchemist may need to obtain
an item from the innkeeper, who he is not on good terms with due to a previous
theft incident involving the innkeeper helping herself to the alchemist's mushrooms.
While players may initially be faced with simple quests involving no trades or only
one trade with other characters (trading interface shown in Fig.
21.2
), more difficult
quests involve trades with all three of the other characters (see Table
21.1
). Given
that players have the ability to perform actions that can lead to conflict—including
theft, property damage, spreading rumours, and not sharing collective resources
such as food, completing multi-player quests rapidly becomes a difficult proposition
in the absence of negotiation.
Many digital learning games adopt an explicitly didactic approach to conveying
domain knowledge. But how one resolves conflict in a constructive manner is
contextually defined; it makes little sense to teach “correct responses”. In addition,
an individual's life experiences will play into their interpretations of acceptable
or desirable modes of conduct. What becomes important, then, is to explore
possible responses and what they may entail in specific situations and social
contexts, and to make sense of them on one's own terms. As such, in terms
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